Waste rubber tires have become an important auxiliary fuel for calcination of cement. In recent years, these tires are passed through a preheater and charged into a kiln for burning. Since the kiln is operated continuously over the 24 hour period, and since the kiln requires temperature controls, the number of tires charged to the furnace per interval of time is determined by calculating the weight and calories of the tires charged at the charging point of the preheater. It is therefore necessary to feed waste tires into the preheater one by one.
It has been known to separate and convey waste rubber tires such as automobile tires and the like one by one from a stack of tires. Techniques are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 11808/1982. In this design, an individual separating technique is employed using a water stream with which it is necessary to utilize a large pool for holding a multitude of tires. As the tires float, this large number of tires is necessary in order to continuously supply tires to the preheater. Moreover, since the pool of water is outdoors, the flow tires will be occasionally disturbed by an outside airflow traveling counter to the water stream. More importantly, water is likely to enter the interior space of the tire, causing difficulty and requiring the removal of the water.
Also known is Japanese Patent Publication No. 11955/1988 which describes a transport technique for classifying the separated waste tires by size. This disclosure does not describe a technique for separating and transporting one tire from a plurality of waste tires which are being carried together. There is no provision for separating those tires from a bulk quantity or pile of tires.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for separating pluralities of rubber tires into individual separate spaced apart tires being carried on a transport apparatus.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a separation and transport apparatus for large quantities of tires, in which the quantity of tires is separated so that only one tire at a time is removed from the plurality for transport to a charging port of a preheater or other device for using the individual tires singlely and one at a time.
Other objects will appear hereinafter.